Actual Prayer 1

As a companion to our Actual Conversation Series, I offer up Sam's bedtime prayer in its entirety:

Dear God, help everyone to feel better, and help me go poop when I'm done praying.

Sorry

I've been working over here.

This having 2 blogs is a little weird. I'll try to work it out better. Until then . . .

The More Things Change . . .

. . . the more proof there is that you have children.

For the past few weeks, Jonah has been sleeping in the top bunk, by himself. He started out slowly, trying it once and then moving back down when Sam pitched a fit.

For a while Jonah would lay down (lie down?) in the bottom bunk until Sam went to sleep, and then move up to the top bunk. Because Jonah would also fall asleep, this led to interesting events at 3 AM. One morning, when I went in to get the big boys up for school, Jonah woke up and began crying because he hadn't woken up and climbed up top before the morning.

Then Lottie came over, and she and Jonah took turns sleeping solo in the top bunk. Then Jonah alternated, one night on the bottom bunk with Sam, the other night on the top bunk alone. It helped that on the night Jonah slept up top (which Sam hates), Sam got to pray first (which he loves).

But now Jonah just sleeps up there every night. Sam has gotten somewhat used to it, in that he no longer cries at bedtime, pleading with Jonah, or Stephen, or Timothy to come sleep with him. That was a rough week, because both Timothy and Stephen are such tender-hearted guys that we had to hold them back from Sam's siren song. Plus, one of them bunking with Sam would leave the other one alone in their own bed (we draw the line at 2 per twin mattress), and neither of the big boys is too keen on solo sleeping.

And so, for the past couple of weeks, it's been Timothy and Stephen in their own double bed, Jonah on the top bunk alone, and Sam on the bottom bunk alone.

(Jonah still leans over the edge and talks to Sam, and they manage to keep each other awake just as effectively as when they shared the bottom bunk. Kids.)

One side effect has been that Sam, when he wakes in the night, now wakes up by himself. And so, as 3-year-olds are wont to do, he cries. (Please note: this was my original purpose for doubling up the kids in beds, to prevent nighttime crying. It was not a cost-saving measure, as has been posited by some folks. Ahem.)

And when Sam cries, I do what I always did with Timothy. I go climb in bed with him until a) he stops crying (i.e., falls asleep) and I can go back to my own bed or b) I fall asleep and wake up the next morning in the bottom of a twin bunk, which is not a comfy at 35 as it was at 29, and is in no way as cool as it was when I was 8.

But the other night, it was Jonah who woke up after having a bad dream. And because he was alone (a real-life example of sleeping in the bed you have made for yourself) he was scared. So he came into our room and climbed in bed with us. I know this because I woke up with his elbow in my ribs and with his feet kicking places that heretofore had remained unkicked since my last bout of bunking with Stephen (he's a kicker, that one).

After a discussion with my wife the next day (after my voice had reduced to a somewhat more commanding tone), it was decided that Jonah would no longer be allowed to come hop in bed with us after bad dreams. We could go comfort him and pray with him, but he would stay in his bed and we would stay in ours.

This new system was put to the test the very next night (what had he been watching?), when I got up at about 4 to go calm him down and pray with him. After the crying stopped, and after the praying, he said, "I should have taken 3 drinks of water."

It being 4 AM, I let that pass.

The next day I asked Jonah what he meant by 3 drinks of water, and he said that Stephen had told him that if he took 3 drinks of water he would not have bad dreams. Stephen says stuff like this pretty frequently, and we're trying to decide whether he's playing tricks on other people, or whether he thinks these things are true and is just trying to pass along helpful information.

Regardless, the next night as I was putting Jonah to bed he jumped down after prayers and said, "I need to take my 3 drinks of water so that I don't have nightmares." I said, "But we've prayed about your nightmares," to which he replied, "I know, but Stephen said to drink 3 drinks of water so that you won't have nightmares."

He drank, and there were no nightmares.

Syncretism ahoy!

Sending The Wrong Message

At the rec center where the boys take karate (and possibly gymnastics), there's a sign that reads, simply:

Yoga!

Can't Bear It

Last night we started reading The Hobbit to the big boys. The results were interesting.

We had finished Harry Potter 2 (COS) the night before, and Stephen wanted to watch that movie right away, since family tradition says they can't watch the HP movies until after they've read the book.

His mother had already told him that we would be watching it Friday night. But he pestered me all through cooking dinner yesterday, asking if we could watch the movie that night. I said no, that it was already too late to begin such a long movie, that it was a school night, that he couldn't watch it while the little guys were awake, etc.

So he got grumpy.

Now, here's the thing. When Stephen gets corrected, disciplined, or denied in any way, he gets grumpy. He pouts, puts on a sour face, hangs his head, and stomps around the house. When he talks to you, if he'll talk at all, he uses a very low voice with the shortest possible answers. Aside from all this, when he's in a grump he'll often do things to make his situation much, much worse. He'll kick things, yell at his brothers, or snap at one of us, and this only gets him in more trouble.

Time usually wears this out, although there have been times where doing one of his favorite things will also make him snap out of it. One time he was throwing a very serious, multi-hour grump about something, only to come skipping and smiling in when we started to play Crash Team Racing.

So, last night, informed at dinner for the last time that we would not be watching the movie nor beginning Harry Potter 3 (POA), he put on a show for the whole family.

Because last night's reading of the first chapter of The Hobbit turned into a full-family event. We read in the living room, Jonah on the couch with me and Sparkles, my wife in the chair, Timothy at the dining room table, finishing up dinner (a combination of a late Karate class and his own naturally slow eating had him finish up around an hour after the rest of us), and Sam bouncing around the room. Stephen, in full grumpitude, lay on another couch, facing away from us all, fingers in his ears.

As I read, he would occasionally mutter, just loud enough to hear but certainly intended for our ears, an angry "Hmph." After several of these, and some physical grumpery involving Sam, I asked Stephen to go upstairs and go to bed. By all appearances, he was not listening to the story at all, and was taking active measures to avoid it.

He stood up, face downcast at the floor, brows furrowed, lips pursed, and stomped out of the room. He even dropped his night-night on the floor in a grand gesture, but immediately thought better of it and whisked it up.

After he had left, we resumed reading. A few minutes later, I noticed Sam standing at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes fixed on about the second step up. Stephen was sitting there, listening to the story, whispering urgently for Sam to go away and not give up his secret.

Being a blunt instrument, I said, loudly, "Stephen, if you want to listen you can come back." There was a loud "Hmph!" from the stairs, and then the sound of a stomping 7-year-old going up to his room.

A few minutes later, my wife whispered to me, "Don't look at the kitchen." Of course I looked, and there was Stephen, standing in the doorway, drawn back to the story. This time, I didn't say a thing, but my wife motioned for him to come over. He did, and he stayed for the rest of the night's reading.

Of note, Timothy listened quietly at the table and Sam didn't listen at all, practicing living room gymnastics for the entire half-chapter. Jonah on the other hand, sat next to me, quietly and repeatedly whispering all the odd words to himself, playing them around each other. "Baggins, baggins, baggins, thorin, thorin, bifur, bofur, bifur, bofur."

We'll finish chapter 1 tonight, and then get on our way to trolls, elves, orcs, eagles, bear-men, spiders, and then, a few weeks from now, the dragon himself.